Essay 2

The character that I believe stayed most true to themselves and their culture is Olive from Little Miss Sunshine. She worked hard to be successful in her beauty pageant, no matter what other people around her would say. When she was first told she would be able to compete in in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant everyone was happy for her and she was even more excited to be in it. Once they were on the road to get to the pageant her family starts to fall apart. At one point she is told not to eat ice cream because her family tells her that she will not win the pageant if she eats the ice cream. At first she does not eat the ice cream but then realizes that she does not care what other people think. As her families dreams start to fall apart they all start to live dreams through Olive. They put pressure on her to win and worry about how she looks and her chances to win.

Even though Olive hears the things that her family worries about and still keeps her confidence. She still has a huge desire to win. Once she gets to the pageant and starts to compete she sees all the other girls with fake hair, fake teeth etc. But she still sticks with her personalty. She shows worry about the other girls but still has confidence. When she gets on stage there are a lot of people who wonder why she is there and her family starts to believe that she is not going to win. They ask her if she wants to leave and not compete but she stays and tries to get everyone to open up to her being different from the other girls.

In Olive's final performance she gets on stage and dedicate her dance to her grandpa who had died and helped her come up with the dance. When she starts dancing it is a raunchy dance that offends all the parents in the crowd and the judges. When the head judge tells her to stop she keeps going and her family joins in on her dance. They finally come around to embrace Olive's personalty and realize she is perfect just the way she is. Throughout the whole movie Olive is true to who she is and never lets anyone tell her otherwise.

There was not a total strain on her losing her culture. Part of her keeping her culture was her not changing herself to conform to the look of the other girls in the pageant. But overall there was not a threat to her culture.

I adore Olive and how she was able to be herself throughout all of her adventure. Even with all the outside pressuring her to change she stayed true to herself.

Essay 1

My personal favorite movie that we watched this year was Chak De India. It was interesting and and was very empowering.  It is not often that you see a movie about women succeeding in sports. I was also able to relate with the girls in the movie. I am often put down for being a girl. People saying that I am not as important and can not do as much with my life. That was the same issue the girls in the movie were having.  And I am also put down for being a girl who plays sports. People like to say that women's sports are a joke and are not as serious as men's sports. People just like to use the excuse that you are a woman as a way to make you feel lesser. Something that I found very different in this movie to my real life is the importance of field hockey and cricket in India.
All the girls on the team have a strong dream of winning the World Cup in field hockey. They are all also constantly being told that their dream is a joke. Saying that it is a goal that will not be able to be accomplished. Most of this comes from the men in their lives. Weather it is their fathers or boyfriends they say that because they are women it is silly of them to want this dream. All of India is also discouraging them from playing because they do not want to be a joke anymore. They are told that they are women and need to become house wives and moms. They take this criticism and turn it into the motivation to prove all of them wrong. These are also things that I hear in my life. I am told that I am a women and am lesser then men. They say that women are not as smart, not as hard working, not as strong etc. But I also take this and use it to my advantage. Hearing all these things just makes me want to prove them all wrong. It gives me the same motivation that the girls in the movie have. They take it and show that if  you do not let things get to you and turn it into a positive you can succeed. Seeing their success it shows me i can also do anything I want with my life.
This whole movie is an underdog story. These women come from all over India and have to learn to play together to become great team. This is a lot like my soccer team. We mostly do not play together during the off season and we have to become cohesive. We have to overcome some of the same issues the girls in the movie had to. We learned to positions that would help the team. Personally I went from being the one scoring goals to being in charge of stopping them. We also have the issue of egos. The Indian team had many girls who wanted the spotlight and they had to share it if they wanted to win. This is a problem with every team and the ones who can overcome it are the ones who win. Watching this movie was almost a mirror image of my team. We are all so different, but are able to come together and win for our school.
Something different I saw in this movie compared to my own life is the different sports that they play. In this movie the two most important sports they play are field hockey and cricket. Unlike here in the U.S. we play ice hockey and baseball. The reason those sports are more important in India than they are here is because those sports steam from The United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom occupied India for several years. It is all based on our pasts. This shows how much our pasts influence our present.
Overall I really was able to feel connected to these girls because they have to overcome some of the same things that I do. They overcame this problems and it has made me determined to do the same.

Reaction to Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine was good movie. Also it is very hilarious. It was the classic dysfunctional American family. The grandpa was a drug addict that was very supportive of his granddaughters dream. The father was a failed author who was always shoving his message down his family's throats. The mother was the optimist, until everything started to go wrong. But she did come around in the end. The brother was keeping a vow of silence until he was able to enlist in the air force. When he found out he would not be able to get his dream, he focused his efforts  on helping his sister reach hers. The uncle was a depressed man who had fallen from grace. In the end they all did what they could to forget the failures they had had to help Olive reach her goals.
This movie had a lot of cultural similarities to my life. Mostly because is was based in the Untied States.  One thing that is big in the United States is the whole beauty pageant. In the United States a lot of our culture is based around looks. We are a very obsessed with the idea of the perfect beauty. When Olive actually makes it to the pageant she sticks out because she is not made up with fake hair and a ton of make-up. She is true to who she is and does not let the other girls sway her from her way. I always have respect for people that do not want to look fake and change themselves for the benefit of others(which happens a lot more nowadays).
Something that was very familiar to me in this movie was the food. They choose very common American food for this film. The first meal they had was Kentucy Fried Chicken. They had the American problem where everyone has a million things going on. It seems like sometimes a family dinner is the first thing to go to the wayside. But this is something that should be really important in family life.
I can say I have ever been in a beauty pageant or been to one. But from watching this I do not really want to be. It seemed like it was very shallow but did give these girls confidence.
Overall I really enjoyed this movie. It was super funny and basically made fun of the "typical" American family. I would recommend everyone watches this movie.